State of the art communications systems comprise a multitude of communication terminals and nodes connected by an interconnecting network. The communications systems provide facilities and services to users of the communications systems via their terminals.
Current communication terminals can have a multitude of physical access possibilities to the interconnecting network via access points. Physical access can be based on a radio link using a radio frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum such as generally known under the acronyms WLAN, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, DECT, or Bluetooth, or utilise another part of the electromagnetic spectrum like infrared ports. These types of access are commonly identified as wireless or cellular access. Alternative is a fixed line connection, utilising electrical, optical or comparable means for transportation of information. These are generally known under the acronyms like ADSL, SDSL, cable-modem, LAN, ISDN or regular PSTN, and commonly identified as wire-line access.
Communication terminals having only wireless connection as physical access are identified as mobile terminals. Communication terminals having wire-line connections or a combination of wire-line and wireless connections as physical access are further identified as fixed communication terminals. In general, in the present invention, the term Terminal(s) is equally valid for mobile and fixed communication terminals.
In addition to the physical access, a Terminal can have a plurality of functional accesses towards facilities and services provided by the communications system like Switched voice call, IP based voice call, SMS, MMS, internet browsing, e-mail.
The communications system further comprises administration, charging and executing functions. The executing functions actually provide the facilities and services of the communications system. Administration functions register various items like; subscription of users to services and facilities, connection status of user's Terminal functional and physical access, allowable quota for facilities and services, user authentication, Terminal authentication, and passwords. The charging functions in the communications system register the actual usage of facilities and services, translate actual usage in charged amounts and forward charging information to billing systems outside the communication network.
The basis for charging is: billing, charging a prepaid account or charging a credit account. The charging can be subject to a subscription where a subscription fee covers the actual usage of services and facilities in the communications system, or to a subscription where a fee covers only a limited amount of usage of services and facilities in the communications system and where usage beyond the limited amount is charged.
State of the art communications systems comprise multiple parties, which offer services and facilities to users of the communications system. These parties will further be identified as Providers. Providers deliver competing services and facilities. Pricing is a prime item in competition.
For a user of the communications system it has become very difficult to maintain overview of actual cost of a service or facility in the communications system. Regulations currently enforce to some extent that Providers present information on cost of services and facilities before executing the user's request for these services and facilities. This presented information is commonly known as Advice of Charge.
Currently systems and methods are known that provide Advice of Charge. Major drawback of the existing systems and methods is that they act only when a user explicitly requests Advice of Charge, identified as a solicited case, or when a user initiates a request for a facility or service for which then an Advice of Charge is given, identified as an unsolicited case. A user is however not informed when he/she does not explicitly requests advice of charge or initiates a service or facility. In some situations this does not satisfy user interests as shown in the following example.
A user is aware and has used a facility in the communication network that allows the user during a voice communication with another Terminal to send a picture taken with user's Terminal to the other Terminal. The user however uses this facility only in very special occasions as it has a very high price per picture.
A provider of this facility knows that the high price withholds users to actually use the facility. The provider has decided to lower the price and use a charging scheme for the facility that charges half price for first, third, fifth etc. picture and free of charge for second, fourth, etc. picture.
The user, unaware of adapted pricing, rather describes an artefact interested in to his/her call partner, than sending a picture. Would the user have known the new prising the user would have sent a picture, as it is then less costly sending one or two pictures, then describing it in long voice conversation.
Not being aware, the user will not request advice of charge for sending a picture nor initiate this service. A comparable situation exists when the price of sending a picture changes after having sent a predefined number of pictures during a call.
As shown by the example, the user would have appreciated timely information on the new charging. Likewise, there are many other cases where a user would appreciate this.